Jim Palmer is a marketing expert, business coach, entrepreneur, author and speaker. Founder of both the Dream Business Academy and Dream Business Coaching and Mastermind Program, he works to provide Smart Marketing and Business Building Strategies for growth-oriented entrepreneurs and small business owners. This mission extends to Jim’s hosting enterprises on Dream Business Coach TV, the hit weekly web TV show with an audience of thousands, and Stick Like Glue Radio, a weekly podcast that helps entrepreneurs take their business to the next level. Jim is best known internationally as ‘The Dream Business Coach’ and creator of No Hassle Newsletters, the ultimate ‘done-for-you’ newsletter marketing program used by hundreds of clients in nine countries.
The first step in Jim’s path to successful entrepreneurship began when, at age 41, his lucrative position as VP of Marketing was eliminated. With four teenagers and a mortgage, he sought another traditional job, but long-term unemployment and a cancer diagnosis inspired him to launch his own small marketing business in October 2000. Eventually, Jim learned about internet marketing and direct response, which led to the creation of his wildly successful coaching business.
On this episode of the podcast, Jim offers a mini-master class in time management and the real grit of being an entrepreneur. Listen in and develop the confidence to say ‘yes’ and grow your own Dream Business!
Key Takeaways
Jim’s definition of a Dream Business
The ‘bookend schedule’
The difference between an employee and an entrepreneur
Jim’s guidance regarding when to start building your business
Jim’s advice to entrepreneurs just getting started
The necessary mindset for fostering adventure
Resources
Stop Waiting For it to Get Easier: Create Your Dream Business Now by Jim Palmer
Connect with Jim Palmer
Laura is back to help you deal with losing a freelance client. On this episode of the podcast, she talks you through the necessary process of self-reflection and offers strategies for replacing lost revenue when a contract ends.
Learn from Laura’s experience as she shares mistakes she made early in her freelancing career. She was able to leverage those missteps into learning opportunities and develop a knack for replacing lost revenue quickly through a savvy hustle that includes capitalizing on established client relationships and expanding service offerings.
Laura also offers advice on how to recover from the loss of a client, emotionally and financially. Listen in and learn her practical three-step approach to rebounding when a client chooses to end a business relationship!
Key Takeaways
The reasons why a contract might end
Laura’s advice about learning from your mistakes
The need for clear, specific feedback from clients
Laura’s tips for replacing lost revenue
Resources
Laura’s Full List of Courses https://laurapennington.teachable.com/
Connect with Laura Pennington
Blog http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/blog/
Twitter https://twitter.com/sixfigurewriter
Website http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/
Email info@betterbizacademy.com
Sarah Foster quit her 9 to 5 job two years ago and now works full-time from her home studio as a jewelry designer as well as a design, branding and marketing consultant to female entrepreneurs and host of the FIT & FIERCE Podcast. As founder, creator and Chief Foul Mouth of Bad Bad Jewelry, Sarah’s mission is to inspire and empower women to go after what they want.
Sarah began her career working in the call center for Amazon, then taking a job in the financial industry. Seeking a creative outlet, Sarah started designing one-of-a-kind jewelry as a side gig. Eventually, she founded the company Nomadic Fashion and tried jewelry full-time. After two years of entrepreneurship, Sarah was struggling and realized that it was necessary to return to the corporate world. Landing a job as an executive assistant at a design firm, Sarah earned enough money to fund the next step of her journey and Bad Bad Jewelry was born. On this episode of the podcast, Sarah offers advice about outsourcing and inspires you to take risks and do the work you love.
Key Takeaways
Sarah’s tips for gaining confidence
If you’re working a job that doesn’t make you happy, use it as motivation to discover your true passion
Sarah’s advice for struggling entrepreneurs
Sarah’s guidelines for juggling multiple projects
Sarah’s suggestions for beginning entrepreneurs
“It’s going to be okay”
Resources
Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
Connect with Sarah Foster
Laura returns with a mini-master class in duplicate content. Prepare to learn what it is and why it matters on this episode of the Better Biz Academy podcast!
As a freelance writer, it is paramount to understand that you cannot get away with copying someone else’s work. Even if it is unintentional, word-for-word phrasing already used on other sites has dire consequences for search engine rankings – not to mention the loss of credibility you will suffer as a freelancer.
Laura explains how to protect yourself and provide a guarantee that your content is 100% original! Click and listen to learn how to identify duplicate content and help your clients stay out of “Google jail.”
Key Takeaways
The definition of duplicate content
The consequences of duplicate content
The benefits of using Copyscape
Laura’s advice for freelancers hired by clients with duplicate content
Laura’s tips to avoid inadvertently submitting duplicate content
Resources
Laura’s Full List of Courses https://laurapennington.teachable.com/
Connect with Laura Pennington
Blog http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/blog/
Twitter https://twitter.com/sixfigurewriter
Website http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/
Email info@betterbizacademy.com
Ardelia Lee is a content roadmap engineer and copywriter who helps small business owners create intentional, goal-oriented content that supports long-term business growth. She earned both a BA and MA in English Language and Literature from Sam Houston State University. After moving from Texas to Detroit, Ardelia landed her first client, a small news publication called Daily Detroit, by answering an ad on Craigslist. That partnership led to referrals, and soon she had developed her niche in content strategy and copywriting for businesses. When she’s not scheming with her clients, you can find her curled up with an obnoxiously long fantasy novel and a warm cup of coffee.
On this episode of the podcast, Ardelia gets down to the nitty gritty of content strategy and reveals the common mistakes business owners make in that regard. She walks us through the steps she takes to develop working relationships with new clients and the Content Cleanse Challenge she is offering now!
Key Takeaways
Quality leads can come from a number of sources
The benefits of juggling a dozen (or more!) clients at one time
Ardelia’s ‘freelancer writer challenges’
Ardelia’s advice for freelancers just getting started
Freelancers must devote time to both project completion and marketing the business
Clients don’t know or care when you do the work, as long as you meet deadlines
Ardelia’s onboarding process for new clients
Common mistakes business owners make re: content strategy
The advantages of pricing by writing packages
Ardelia’s strategies for growing her business and business connections
Ardelia’s best tip for content creators
Resources
Connect with Ardelia Lee
Laura returns with another solo podcast to share the strategy she uses to make the most of her writing time, the Pomodoro Technique. This approach wires your brain to focus on a single, specific writing task for a short burst of 25 minutes before allowing yourself a five minute break. While she initially resisted implementing this approach, Laura came to realize that she was less effective when multitasking and did benefit from working on a given task, free from distractions.
Listen in to learn how the Pomodoro Technique helped Laura triple her business revenue, take on more clients and have time for herself and other projects! Then implement this valuable brain hack to increase your own productivity without sacrificing the quality of your work.
Key Takeaways
Guidelines of the Pomodoro Technique
Laura’s advice for dealing with stray thoughts that don’t apply to the task at hand
Consider utilizing tools to help you focus
Laura’s tips for making breaks purposeful
More time in front of the computer doesn’t necessarily result in increased productivity
Determine the time of day when you are most effective and focused to double or even triple your productivity
Laura’s Pomodoro challenge
Resources
Ed Gandia’s Focus@Will Podcast
Connect with Laura Pennington
Blog http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/blog/
Twitter https://twitter.com/sixfigurewriter
Website http://sixfigurewritingsecrets.com/
Kali Rogers is the CEO and founder of Blush Online Life Coaching. She has her BA in Psychology from the University of Texas in Austin and her masters in counseling from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she leads a team of five who coach millennial females all over the globe through the Quarter Life Crisis.
Kali first began to develop the idea for Blush while bartending her way through graduate school. She noticed the high turnover of young female managers and pitched the idea of online counseling to the large restaurant chain where she worked. Although they didn’t bite, Kali continued to be drawn to entrepreneurship, and when she was fired from a traditional counseling job, the time was right to start Blush.
Blush’s mission is to provide affordable, convenient and professional online life coaching for any girl, anywhere. The company is dedicated to encouraging, motivating and challenging girls from all over the globe. On this episode of the podcast, Kali destroys the stigma associated with counseling (strong, successful people benefit from coaching), explains Blush’s validating coaching style and encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to take the leap.
Key Takeaways
High functioning individuals benefit from counseling and coaching services
The psychological challenges of entrepreneurship
Kali’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs
Definition of Quarter Life Crisis
Kali’s Marketing Tips:
Customize your services to maximize accessibility
Resources
Connect with Kali Rogers
Laura returns with another solo podcast to share her business secrets with beginning freelancers. She offers advice in several areas of business basics, including marketing, dealing with difficult clients, developing a support system and establishing your schedule.
Learn from the best as Laura shares her own stories about getting started in the freelance writing business. Find out how she deals with negative comments from friends and colleagues who don’t acknowledge freelancing as a ‘real’ career and the strategies she employs to sever ties with difficult clients.
Laura also explains how conversion rate shifts as you become more established and why setting official business hours is necessary to maintain work-life balance. If you’re just getting started in the freelance writing business, this podcast is a must-listen!
Key Takeaways
The breakdown of marketing vs. delivering work to clients
The power to say ‘no’
Laura’s advice about finding a support system
The benefits of establishing official working hours
Resources
Connect with Laura Pennington
Kim Garnett is the founder of Brainy Girl Virtual Assistant. She and her team help online course creators with the technology and marketing of their online courses. They assist with the strategy and implementation of sales funnels, landing pages, webinars, email marketing and social media marketing for clients. Kim has created several successful online courses, and she is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs create passive income streams.
Kim was working a regular job and hating it when the idea for Brainy Girl was born. Wanting to get back to her first love of helping business owners and entrepreneurs, Kim placed an online ad and landed her first client. She worked nights and weekends and got very busy very quickly. Soon Kim was able to leave her j-o-b and freelance as a generalist. In the four years since, she found her niche – helping online course creators – and her team has grown to seven.
On this episode of the podcast, Kim explains how to utilize email marketing, drive traffic to your website and build a results-oriented lead magnet. She also opens up about the current challenges she faces in growing a virtual team and mistakes she made along the way to building Brainy Girl.
Key Takeaways
Kim’s secrets to finding freelance work
Email marketing is an important component of your overall marketing strategy
Kim’s advice for luring potential clients to sign up for your email list
Kim’s suggestions for attracting customers to your website
Steps to launching your email marketing list
Common stumbling blocks to creating an online course
Kim’s tips for using marketplaces like Udemy and Upwork
Kim’s best advice for people who are just getting started
Resources
MailChimp https://mailchimp.com/
ConvertKit https://convertkit.com/
Udemy https://www.udemy.com/
Thinkific https://www.thinkific.com/
Connect with Kim Garnett
Website http://brainygirlvirtualassistant.com/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BrainyGirlVirtualAssistant/
Twitter https://twitter.com/kim_garnett
Getting noticed online is a challenge, but Erin Montgomery has the secret sauce. She is the founder of Piper Media, a boutique communications agency that offers social media packages and à la carte services developed through Erin’s ten years of media and public relations experience. She works with both brick and mortar businesses local to her native Toronto and savvy online creatives across the globe.
On this podcast, Erin addresses the value of social media in marketing your business, maintaining self-discipline when you’re self-employed, and establishing clear boundaries with clients.
Key Takeaways
Erin’s smart strategy for landing new clients
The secret weapon for staying disciplined when you work for yourself
Set boundaries to establish work-life balance
Erin’s advice regarding how to package your work
Leverage Facebook to reach potential clients
Erin’s keys to getting the most value out of your social media content
Make use of a scheduling tool to plan your posts
You don’t need a fancy degree to land a job in social media marketing, but you do need to understand the channels and be willing to do the work
Resources
Hootsuite https://hootsuite.com/
Hootsuite Academy https://hootsuite.com/education
Connect with Erin Montgomery
Website http://www.pipersocialmedia.com/
Mella Barnes is a session singer, songwriter and producer living in Nashville, Tennessee. An animal lover, she has three dogs, a rabbit and any number of foster animals in various shapes and sizes. Mella is the author of Way Less Cowbell, a book on communicating with session musicians. She specializes in helping others complete their musical projects, working with corporate clients, songwriters and individuals with no musical background who want to compose songs for their loved ones as gifts.
On this episode, Mella offers advice for creatives seeking to use their talents in entrepreneurial ventures, discussing marketing strategy, organization and work-life balance.
Key Takeaways
Mella’s advice for people who are considering starting an online business
While many advise that you stick to one marketing platform, Mella argues that a diversified approach makes you “as findable as you can be”
Mella’s tips for staying organized and meeting deadlines
As you strive to achieve work-life balance, practice daily self-care
Mella’s guidance for creatives who believe they can’t get paid to do what they love
Mella’s advice for dealing with difficult clients:
Music playlists can help you focus and get motivated to work
Start where you are and celebrate progress, even if it’s only 15 minutes
Resources
Mella’s Book Way Less Cowbell: How to Communicate Your Musical Ideas
Connect with Mella Barnes
Laura is back with a solo podcast to discuss the benefits of taking on freelance projects that are outside your comfort zone. Although her core business is SEO blog writing supplemented by a handful of project management and coaching jobs, Laura recently had the opportunity to assist a client in the development of an advertising budget. Inspired by this experience in print and digital marketing, she outlines the beauty of accepting opportunities that are not on-brand, the advantages of developing new skills and the ways freelancers can leverage newly discovered abilities to expand and transform their businesses.
Although you might hesitate to accept a project that seems unglamorous or outside your niche, listen and learn how to change your mindset, expand your skill set and uncover your hidden talents!
Key Takeaways
Every project you take on as a freelancer will not be on-brand
Reasons a freelancer might take on projects outside their comfort zone
Laura’s guidance about focusing on a niche
The benefits of taking on (and even pitching) opportunities that aren’t a perfect fit
Laura’s advice about choosing projects that aren’t spot on
Complementary offerings allow you to pitch additional services to existing clients
Resources
Connect with Laura Pennington
Daphne Gray-Grant grew up in the newspaper business. Her parents owned a struggling weekly, where she worked from the age of 16. From there she advanced to the position of senior editor at a major metropolitan daily, supervising a dozen reporters and editors and managing several daily pages. Eventually she spent four years as a director of communications for the newspaper’s parent company.
Today Daphne is a communications consultant, writing and editing coach, and the author of the best-selling book, 8½ Steps to Writing Faster, Better. She is currently working on her second book titled Writing Your Crappy First Draft. Her popular newsletter Power Writing, which is delivered to more than 12,000 readers around the world, helps corporate communicators, business owners and students write better, faster.
Daphne is also the mother of triplets, which only serves to cement her reputation as a compulsive overachiever. This time on the podcast, Daphne walks us through her journey from traditional job to self-employment and teaches us how to manage our time to accomplish long-term goals as we write better – faster!
Key Takeaways
Daphne’s best tip for writing faster without sacrificing quality is to break the habit of editing-while-you-write
Daphne’s advice for reaching a long-term writing goal:
What is most important to you may not be the most urgent
Daphne’s tips for making a long-term goal into a bite-size, achievable project
Your feeling about your writing is irrelevant to the number of words you produce
Select your topics in advance so that you are not faced with a blank page when you sit down to write
Resources
Daphne’s Book 8 ½ Steps to Writing Faster, Better
Connect with Daphne Gray-Grant
Website and Newsletter Sign-up
Frank Salas (also known as the Talented Mr. Salas) is a serial entrepreneur from Texas living the digital nomad lifestyle. He was born homeless to a single mother, English is his second language, he was raised on a rural farm in Mexico, and he dropped out of college to start his first business at the age of 20. Starting with limited resources, Frank leveraged social media marketing to blow up his business and developed a unique skill set of hiring offshore assistants to grow his online empire while leveraging his currency to get the most return on manpower for his dollar. Today he travels the world, sharing knowledge on entrepreneurship with social media. When he’s not live streaming growth hacks for his tribe, the Talent Tribe, he’s probably somewhere on a rooftop smoking cigars or enjoying some yoga and posting it on his Snapchat.
On this episode of the podcast, Frank talks about his all-in attitude toward entrepreneurship, strategies to build your tribe via social media presence, and how you can scale your business through outsourcing. Get ready to get inspired!
Key Takeaways
Frank’s litmus test for deciding if entrepreneurship is for you
The Four E’s of Value
Frank’s advice for determining your target followers:
Successful entrepreneurs understand that social media is today’s primary marketing strategy and build an online presence to establish their tribe
Frank’s guidelines for outsourcing to scale your business:
Knowledge is not power… The application and execution of knowledge is the power.
Resources
Connect with Frank Salas
Welcome to the premiere of the Better Biz Academy podcast with Laura Pennington! Laura is a wildly successful freelance writer who creates content for a variety of clients, including entrepreneurs, small business owners, life coaches and law firms. She is also the owner of Six Figure Writing Secrets, a platform through which she teaches new and emerging freelancers how to build and grow their businesses.
In 2012, Laura left a teaching career to pursue freelance writing full-time. In just 18 months, she established a six-figure freelance writing business. She is passionate about teaching others how to skip the trial-and-error stage and fast track their careers in freelance writing. On this episode, Laura covers the benefits of pursuing a freelance writing career and outlines the three things you must have to get started.
Key Takeaways
Don’t fall for the myth that it’s too much work to get started
While 80% of new businesses fail within the first year, freelance writing is low risk but has a high potential reward
Another benefit of pursuing freelance writing is that it fits in well with other responsibilities
Laura’s 3 Non-Negotiables for Landing Clients:
Laura’s advice for presenting yourself as a competent professional:
Resources
Connect with Laura Pennington